Trimble Business Center

Jay Pisano posted 03-17-2026 05:23

This is the response support gave: 

As for the error you are seeing this is a null reference occurring within the Takeoff module where TBC is trying to save your project, but it has encountered a blank or missing value in your settings where it expects data, causing the save process to crash.
You likely have a boundary or surface assigned to a Material or Site Improvement that was recently deleted, renamed, or left unselected. TBC is looking for that "Value" and finding "Null" (nothing), which prevents the file from writing to your disk.
Please recheck your Project settings and data as well as the MSI manager for that.
You may also clean your project data using the Purge command or export your project as .vce to move your work into a fresh, clean project template

Quan Mueller posted 03-17-2026 15:24

Which version of TBC is this happening in?

Did the workarounds from Support work?  Were you able to save the file?

John Woodall posted 03-18-2026 11:15

I get this error about once a week with our office setup. In our case I have found that it has lost the link to our network drive. This is normally caused by a power interruption or a loss of signal due to a modem rebooting.

Quan Mueller posted 03-19-2026 10:54

@Jay Pisano, do you see the "not a properly formatted path name" message after the red X "What happened" window?

@John Woodall, do you get the same Exception Type = System.ArgumentNullException, and the 3rd line in the Stack Trace refers to Trimble.Vce.Gem.TakeoffSettings.WriteBody()?

John Woodall posted 03-19-2026 11:00

Quan,

I will have to save a screen shot next time it happens. Lucky for me I do a save about every 5 minutes anyway because of the power infrastructure around the office a heavy wind will cause the power to blink and everything has to reboot. Our UPS does not have enough outlets to plug everything in.

I will let you know when it happens.

Quan Mueller posted 03-19-2026 11:16

Thanks @John Woodall, Jay's underlying issue might be different than yours, but you are both seeing a "not a properly formatted path name" message that is a generic troubleshooting message.

I'm curious about what TBC version Jay is running because that error screenshot (and the response from Support) indicate there's a TBC bug putting the TakeoffSettings into a bad state.  Hopefully it's been fixed by now and the workarounds helped Jay...